Foodhub Fees and Commission: What Does Foodhub Cost Restaurants?

What does Foodhub cost restaurants?

Foodhub charges restaurants fees to receive orders through its marketplace. Its pricing model — which has varied over time and between agreements — has generally been positioned as lower commission than Just Eat or Deliveroo. That was the platform's main selling point for independent takeaways in the UK.

But lower commission than a competitor is not the same as low cost. Marketplace fees still reduce the margin on every order you receive. And the fee on the invoice is only part of what Foodhub actually costs your business.

This guide explains how Foodhub's fee model works, what you get and what you do not, and how the real cost compares to building a direct ordering channel.

How Foodhub's fee model works

Foodhub has used different fee structures at different points in its history and across different markets. In practice, the model falls into two broad categories:

Commission per order. A percentage of each order value is charged to the restaurant. The exact rate depends on your agreement with the platform, your location, and your order volume. For current rates applicable to your account, contact Foodhub directly or check your existing agreement — published rates do not always reflect negotiated terms.

Subscription fee. Some restaurant agreements with Foodhub involve a fixed monthly fee rather than a per-order percentage. This model suits high-volume operators better, since a fixed monthly cost becomes cheaper per order as volume grows.

Not all restaurants on Foodhub are on the same terms. The fee you pay may differ significantly from what another restaurant in the same town is paying, depending on when the agreement was signed and how it was negotiated.

What Foodhub fees include

When you pay Foodhub to list your restaurant, you receive:

A listing on the Foodhub website and app — customers in your delivery radius can find and order from your restaurant through the platform
Order routing — orders placed on Foodhub arrive at your restaurant, typically via a tablet or a direct POS integration
Payment processing — customer card payments are handled through Foodhub's system before being passed on to you
Basic analytics — order volume data and some reporting through the Foodhub restaurant dashboard

What Foodhub fees do not include

The fees give you access to Foodhub's customer base. They do not give you:

Customer data — the name, email address, order history, and contact details of customers who order through Foodhub belong to Foodhub, not to you
Direct marketing capability — you cannot contact Foodhub customers outside the platform with offers, loyalty rewards, or retention campaigns
A branded experience — the checkout, the confirmation email, and the overall experience are Foodhub-branded, not yours
A loyalty programme you own — any loyalty or rewards mechanism sits within the Foodhub platform, not under your restaurant's brand
A restaurant POS system — Foodhub provides order routing but not a POS solution for in-person orders
A website or app in your name — your presence on Foodhub is a listing, not a branded digital channel

The true cost: beyond the commission rate

The headline commission rate understates what Foodhub actually costs your business. The full picture includes both direct and indirect costs.

Margin impact per order

On every order that comes through Foodhub, the platform takes its fee before the remainder reaches you. At meaningful order volumes — say, 250 or more delivery orders per week — the total paid to the platform over 12 months is a significant number. That money does not build anything in your business. It pays for access to a customer who, under a different model, could have been your direct customer.

The opportunity cost of lost customer data

Every order placed through Foodhub builds Foodhub's database, not yours. The customer does not enter your CRM. You cannot market to them directly. You cannot identify lapsing customers and win them back before they go to a competitor.

Over years of Foodhub ordering, you may have served thousands of customers whose details you have never seen. Those customers could have been the foundation of a loyalty programme, a targeted marketing list, or a reliable repeat-order base. Instead, that value has accumulated in the platform's database.

This opportunity cost does not appear on any invoice, but it is real and it compounds.

Platform dependency risk

Once a meaningful portion of your delivery revenue comes through Foodhub, you become dependent on decisions made by the platform: fee increases, ranking changes, new terms of service, or in a worst-case scenario, platform closure or acquisition. Restaurants that have built their own direct channels alongside marketplace presence are less exposed to this risk.

Foodhub fees versus direct ordering costs: a comparison

The most useful comparison is not Foodhub versus another marketplace. It is Foodhub versus what it would cost to run equivalent volume through your own direct ordering channel.

Cost factor	Foodhub	Direct ordering (e.g. Flipdish)
Per-order marketplace commission	Yes	No
Monthly platform subscription	No	Yes
Standard payment processing fees	Yes	Yes
Customer data retained	Foodhub's	Yours
Ability to market directly to customers	No	Yes
Branded app and website	No	Yes
Loyalty programme	None you control	Full, branded
POS system	Not included	Full restaurant POS

At low order volumes, a marketplace can look cheaper because there is no upfront subscription. As volume grows, the maths shifts. A subscription-based direct platform becomes more cost-efficient per order as volume increases — because the subscription cost is fixed while the variable cost (payment processing) stays low. On Foodhub, higher volume means higher total fees.

The customer data you accumulate on a direct platform also has value that sits outside any fee calculation. A database of 10,000 customers you can market to is a business asset. A database of customers who ordered through Foodhub and belong to Foodhub is not.

When Foodhub fees make commercial sense

Foodhub is worth paying for if:

You are in an area where Foodhub has strong consumer penetration and the orders are genuinely incremental — customers who would not have found you otherwise
The margin after fees is acceptable given your cost structure
You are supplementing an existing direct channel and using Foodhub for discovery only
You are in the early stages of building your business and marketplace exposure has practical value

Foodhub fees are harder to justify if:

The fees are reducing margins to the point where Foodhub orders are barely profitable
A significant portion of Foodhub orders could be redirected to a direct channel with moderate effort
You are paying marketplace fees on customers who have ordered from you multiple times and could reasonably have been converted to direct

How restaurants reduce their Foodhub dependency

Restaurants that decide to reduce their exposure to Foodhub fees typically follow a structured approach:

Build a direct ordering channel — usually a branded website and app through a platform like Flipdish
Redirect customers actively — bag inserts, in-store signage, and social media posts that point to the direct channel
Incentivise switching — a first-order discount or loyalty points for customers who try the direct channel
Track the split — monitor how much of your delivery revenue comes from each source and set a goal to grow the direct share
Reduce Foodhub presence when the direct channel can support it — this may mean reducing activity rather than leaving entirely, at least initially

This transition typically takes 6–18 months to produce a meaningful shift in revenue split, depending on how actively the restaurant invests in moving customers across.

The direct ordering alternative: Flipdish

Flipdish gives restaurants everything they need to build a direct ordering channel that genuinely competes with marketplace convenience:

A branded website that looks and functions like a professional restaurant site, not a generic ordering page
A mobile app in your restaurant's name, on the App Store and Google Play
A full restaurant POS system that unifies in-person and online orders
AI Marketing tools that automate retention, win-back campaigns, and loyalty
An AI Phone Agent that handles phone orders without staff involvement

Flipdish is used by independent takeaways through to multi-location restaurant groups across the UK and Ireland. The platform is built specifically for restaurants, which means the tools and support reflect how restaurant operations actually work.

The decision to move away from Foodhub fees is not about spending nothing — it is about spending differently, in a way that builds something you own. Explore Flipdish's online ordering pricing to see how a direct channel compares to what you currently pay in marketplace fees.